Curiosities of Olden Times (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... some crazy saints among the ignorant there is always admiration for the not-understood, and in former times nothing was less understood than hysteria. The original source of a thousand superstitions, and of most idolatries, lies in the sense of surprise, wonder, into which the mind is thrown by seeing that which it cannot explain. A remarkable rock, a queer shell, peculiar eyes in a man or woman, a curious fruit, like the coco-de-mer, awaken admiration, perplex the untaught mind, and superinduce religious reverence. What strikes the imagination thenceforth provokes the instinctive awe felt for the supernatural. Now nothing is more calculated to astonish those who know naught of nervous disorder than the phenomena attending hysteria and its allied maladies. Consequently, not only have hysteric patients been for a long period regarded as specially allied with the spiritual powers, but so also have the insane, because insanity is particularly amazing to the man with his wits about him. To the present day in the East epilepsy is regarded as something sacred, and idiocy and madness as divine possession. It is not marvellous that some men and women in rude times, who were subject to fits, were scrofulous, hysterical, and lived out of the ordinary mode of life, should have been given a character for sanctity that scarcely perhaps was their due. Hysterical persons have a strange craving after sympathy, a hunger after notoriety, and will endure much self-imposed torture to obtain that which to their vanity is dearer than bodily ease. Motives in this world are much mixed, and nowhere more mixed than in hysterical saints, where the glory of God and the glorification of self are inextricably involved. It is not in the least surprising that some of...